So last session i sent my party against some Goblin rogues, I attacked them at night while they slept, and because goblins got crazy high stealth bonuses and sleeping rendering everything blind and deaf except the one guy with a ring of sustenance, i got to sneak attack each of my lvl10 party for 34 damage in the suprise round while they slept before the scuffle unfolded. But it just occurred to me, I dealt 34 damage, which for most of them was a good 1/3 of their health and it was a fun and hairy raising encounter, but I coulda done a coup de grace on every one of them but the ring of sustenance and it woulda been a complete tpk, now my party has no arcane casters or ring forgers so they don't have access to things like alarm or multiple rings of sustenance unless I hand them out like candy, so the most obvious defences against attacks in the night aren't gonna work, but most of all I'm just not sure if coup de grace is a mechanic I think I need??? We all know pathfinder criticals are BRUTAL, and a coup de grace is an automatic crit, not only that but the do or die save is in most cases neigh impossible to do, so I'm wondering if perhaps I should house rule that there is no death save, or at the very least the death save should be the damage dealt not 10 + Damage dealt? As really no matter the magic defenses there is always ways around it and night ambushes will inevitably happen. Let me know your thoughts and suggestions or your personal house rules regarding coup de grace :)
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Even with successful stealth getting adjacent to sleeping people with a full round action to spare shouldn't happen if there's someone on watch. Surprise rounds are only a standard action. With that sort of assumption you don't need to nerf coup de grace IMO.
I suppose more than anything I'm a little perturbed that I could have turned what was a fun encounter into a dissatisfing end to a 4 year long campaign with one fullround action and some lvl 5 goblins, and something so unfun can't lead to anything good in my books so while I think coup de grace has a place I also think an already brutal auto crit is enough without the neigh impossible save-or-die♂️
If your party has a druid or ranger they should look into some of the campsite spells.
You sent something into the absolute optimal position to make use of their abilities and it also happens to be something your party has a profound weakness to.
Basically this is only going to come up when you send high stealth rogue types at your party while they sleep. Unless you have no casters at all, someones gonna have access to something that can help secure camping spaces, or they should start making survival and stealth checks to hide their campsite.
Surprise rounds are only a standard action
you see so long as the goblin doesn't hit them they have all the time in the world, it is completely possible to do a coup de grace in a suprise round so long as the receiving party is completely oblivious
If your party has a druid or ranger they should look into some of the campsite spells.
You sent something into the absolute optimal position to make use of their abilities and it also happens to be something your party has a profound weakness to.
my party has both a ranger and druid but that made no difference as they were in a building in individual rooms not a campsite, they also are no weak to it they have INSANE perseption bonuses from having 2 his wisdom class half elves with skill focus perception and one of them was the ring guy on guard, they just made low perception checks, the sleeping factor is the only reason they didn't all wake up.
Surprise rounds are only a standard actionyou see so long as the goblin doesn't hit them they have all the time in the world, it is completely possible to do a coup de grace in a suprise round so long as the receiving party is completely oblivious
See, that's simply not true unless everyone's asleep. One standard action only.
See, that's simply not true unless everyone's asleep. One standard action only.Surprise rounds are only a standard actionyou see so long as the goblin doesn't hit them they have all the time in the world, it is completely possible to do a coup de grace in a suprise round so long as the receiving party is completely oblivious
everyone WAS asleep -.- and the only guy not asleep didn't get to act in the suprise round anyway so it didn't matter, all they gotta do is move up to the bed and stab
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So you wrote a scenario in which your monsters were impossible to spot and slit everyone's throat in the night. Um, good for you, that's not effectively any different than saying rocks fall everyone dies. This is not the fault of the rules, it is the fault of you, the GM, who wrote this encounter. Write a better encounter.
So you wrote a scenario in which your monsters were impossible to spot and slit everyone's throat in the night. Um, good for you, that's not effectively any different than saying rocks fall everyone dies. This is not the fault of the rules, it is the fault of you, the GM, who wrote this encounter. Write a better encounter.
nobody died numb nuts, I'm just saying the option was there and I argue if such a porent option is really needed with criticals beings as powerful as they are, it's comments like these that make me wonder why the hell I bother posting on these forums
Obviously not everyone was asleep if one person wasn't asleep. By definition.
As I understand the rules: If the goblins move up in the surprise round that's their action in that round. If they're not invisible then that's the end of their stealth, the person on watch yells and coup de grace can't happen next round. If they're invisible or similar they can make stealth checks to avoid having the awake person yelling blue murder, then it'd come down to initiative in the first real round. That's in the ideal situation for the rogues.
If you're assuming that any successful stealth check gets you within 5' and you can delay without further stealth checks required until you get a full round action - then we disagree on the rules.
Obviously not everyone was asleep if one person wasn't asleep. By definition.
As I understand the rules: If the goblins move up in the surprise round that's their action in that round. If they're not invisible then that's the end of their stealth, the person on watch yells and coup de grace can't happen next round. If they're invisible or similar they can make stealth checks to avoid having the awake person yelling blue murder, then it'd come down to initiative in the first real round. That's in the ideal situation for the rogues.
If you're assuming that any successful stealth check gets you within 5' and you can delay without further stealth checks required until you get a full round action - then we disagree on the rules.
They were in separate rooms in the inn.
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So you wrote a scenario in which your monsters were impossible to spot and slit everyone's throat in the night. Um, good for you, that's not effectively any different than saying rocks fall everyone dies. This is not the fault of the rules, it is the fault of you, the GM, who wrote this encounter. Write a better encounter.nobody died numb nuts, I'm just saying the option was there and I argue if such a porent option is really needed with criticals beings as powerful as they are, it's comments like these that make me wonder why the hell I bother posting on these forums
I know, expecting maturity on the internet is foolish of me. That sounded mean, and I suppose the only reaction I can expect is knee jerk defending what you did. The point though is that you should think about what you designed and learn from it for future encounters. You are responsible, that's not a bad thing, that means you are in control, and you have the power to change the outcome.
If you want your characters to have a chance to be able to spot the assassins coming, then you need to assign them numbers in a range where the players could perceive them. As the GM you should know exactly what the range of perceptions are of your players, and can assign a DC to spot the enemies based upon how difficult you want it to be.
Coup de grace almost never comes up unless you do something like you did and design a scenario for it to happen, or a pc has a very niche build designed to take advantage of it. I personally don't see any reason to change coup de grace, but on the other hand, if you do remove it, the impact to the game is going to be minimal to negligible. It will make sleep spells worth less, and regenerating creatures harder to kill, that's about it.
I agree that the party was kind of asking for it. I wouldn’t expect the goblins to be super coordinated though. The nearest goblin would probably rush over and cdg the nearest character without waiting on his buddies. That’s assuming these aren’t some sort of elite goblins.
I dealt 34 damage, which for most of them was a good 1/3 of their health and it was a fun and hairy raising encounter, but I coulda done a coup de grace on every one of them but the ring of sustenance and it woulda been a complete tpk
Well, if it was a fun encounter, everything is fine. Fun is the whole point of RPGs, after all, they are games and neither simulations nor chores. You could have acted in another way, but since this would have been less fun, it would have been a worse resolution. Personally, I don't see any need for a houserule here, since you can cover the problems with your choices.
There is a nice feat to defuse coup de graces somewhat: Merciful Takedown. With it you can use nonlethal damage (-4 AB are not relevant for CdG, since no attack roll) to turn your victim unconscious for an hour. Good for any monster who prefers to sacrifice its victim alive, torture them a bit more or eat it alive. Chance for escape or rescue included. I guess affected players won't blame you if you spontaneously sneak the feat in as a free bonus feat...
For my 2c; I don't think that there was anything wrong with the encounter's design. The 'fault' if it can be called that is with the party being unbalanced and unprepared.
As others have said coup –de-grace is a full round action. Since it is a full round action that means the goblins would have to be next to them in orde4r to get a cup-de-grace. That means the party has to fail two perception rolls in order for the goblins to pull it off. Also if there were locks on the door they should have gotten a perception roll when they were picked. That would raise the number of failed perceptions rolls to 3. Now they do take a -10 penalty for being asleep, but that is still three failed perception rolls needed.
While you may not have an arcane caster Alarm is a ranger spell. There are also mundane tactics that can make being sneaked up on difficult or even impossible. Putting bottles on the window so that if they are opened they fall and break is going make coming through the windows a lot more difficult. At that point you are not rolling to spot the goblin you are rolling to hear the glass breaking and that is going to be a lot easier. Blocking the door from opening by placing a heavy object in front of it will prevent the goblins from getting in that without making a lot of noise.
If your party has a druid or ranger they should look into some of the campsite spells.
Don't need a druid or ranger.
What the party needs is Keep Watch
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I'm wondering what happened to all the other people in this inn. Did the goblins allocate one to each and every guest, barmaid and ostler? Were they all fast asleep and stone deaf too? No guard dogs? Did nobody see them sneaking down the street to the inn, bypassing everything else?
Or did the goblins somehow know which rooms the PCs were staying in and target those rooms only?
Coup de Grace is perfectly fine. Don't use it if you don't want to. That's great. No use banning it, since it never comes up anyways.
That party probably deserves to be CdG'ed, TPK, roll new characters that know how to set up a proper fire guard.
And all of what Mudfoot is saying... did the Goblins attack anyone else in the inn? How did they know which rooms the party was in? How did they get into town in the first place? Is there not a single dog or horse anywhere in this town?
Grâce.
If you're going to be that guy.
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Grâce.
If you're going to be that guy.
Not to be confused with a Coupé de Grace which is a small automobile with really good handling.
I use coup de grâce liberally, especially against sleeping, paralyzed or otherwise helpless targets. It's a really efficient way to get the kill. And they call me a "murderous psychopath"... ridiculous.
Oh, you meant in Pathfinder.
Why would it ever happen if you were obviously looking for something else?
The entire point of the Coup de Grace is to kill something. If you don't want it to die, then do literally anything else.
You can have the enemy go through all the theatrics of a CdG, but it's just a normal attack. Or you can give the enemies Throat Slicer and Dastardly Finish, let them go to town. Either way, the Coup de Grace is perfectly fine the way it is now.